Toward a Bioregional State

Launched to provide an information service connected with _Toward a Bioregional State, the book; the blog is the commentary, your questions and my answers, and news from around the world related to the issues of sustainability and unsustainability in a running muse on various issues of concern or inspiration.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Opening the Black Box of Corporate/EPA science

According to the U.S. EPA, about 5 billion pounds of pesticides were used in the U.S. in 2001. And researchers estimate only 1 to 2 percent of agricultural applications reach their target pest.

Today, each new active ingredient must pass more than 100 safety tests to be legally registered. (Despite the fact that inert ingredients, which can constitute up to 99.9 percent of the total, can be just as toxic, tests are mandated only for [the tiny portion of proclaimed] active ingredients [even though the inactive ingredients can be active in other ways like allowing wider permeability of other toxins through skin for example.])

All 'experiments' are completed by the manufacturers. None of it is peer reviewed. Some of it is clearly rigged to get rubbestamped by the EPA that fails to do their own tests.

EPA intentionally designed to be without the authority to set pollution standards--despite having oversight over pollution--supposedly...actually, such pollution standards are thrown into the heavily corrupted conflicts of interest in the Food and Drug Administration, noted in the vaccine story posted here.

It's mentioned in the bioregional state book that upwards of 80% of the United States--with little differences between Democratic or Republican voters with addictions to either of these ever so similar parties--want to see their environmental laws strictly enforced and even strengthened.

Opening the black box of corrupt corporate science is required for that, perhaps making all corporate science go through peer review publication. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

Three years ago, while my extended family was vacationing at my dad's cranberry farm, he mentioned that one of his fields would be sprayed that evening. There were five children under 10 in the house, and I was eight months pregnant. The field was 100 feet away. I asked my dad about the pesticides, but he said, "Don't worry. The government runs tests on the chemicals. They make sure they're safe."

That night, through a closed window, I watched the plane rumble low over the field, the fog behind it drizzling softly to the ground. Behind me, in the house, the kids laughed and called, playing hide-and-seek. I started wondering about these tests.

I decided to do a little research. According to the U.S. EPA, about 5 billion pounds of pesticides were used in the U.S. in 2001. And researchers estimate only 1 to 2 percent of agricultural applications reach their target pest. Not surprisingly, these toxins can be found in almost every stream -- and in most Americans' bloodstreams.

This country's heavy reliance on synthetic pesticides is fairly new. We're still on a learning curve that began in the 1940s. Around then, partially spurred on by chemical-warfare research, the new industry began to churn out products designed to kill everything from fungi to rodents. Until the 1960s, these toxins were tested mainly to make sure they were effective. But since Silent Spring, people have become increasingly wary about their health effects. Today, each new active ingredient must pass more than 100 safety tests to be legally registered. (Despite the fact that inert ingredients, which can constitute up to 99.9 percent of the total, can be just as toxic, tests are mandated only for active ingredients.)

At the EPA website, I found a seemingly thorough list of tests that examined chemicals' effects on birds, mammals, fish, invertebrates, and plants. These tests checked for storage stability, residue on food, soil absorption, and short-term toxicity, as well as carcinogenic effects, prenatal harm, and damage to human fertility and genetic material. As I scanned the categories, a knot of worry inside me began to relax.

Until I learned all these experiments are completed by the manufacturers.

I called EPA press officer Enesta Jones, who said she had no problem with manufacturers overseeing safety experiments. Since the EPA is responsible for pesticide registration, she explained, it conducts compliance investigations, has developed strict guidelines, and reviews all data to ensure its integrity. (The agency's role does not include enforcement of the tolerance levels it establishes, a duty that falls to the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture.)

Now, I've always been impressed with science, which seems to be one of the few fields that hasn't recently suffered some large scandal. Good science is based on transparency. Breakthroughs are reported in peer-reviewed journals, and experiments can be reenacted to verify the results. The openness of the system creates a consensus that heads toward truth.

Unfortunately, pesticide-safety experimentation is not transparent.

Although the analyses are performed by professional scientists, the results are often reported only to the EPA. They are rarely published in peer-reviewed journals, and must often be requested through the Freedom of Information Act, a process that can take years.

To get an idea of what's behind the curtain, consider the findings of Tyrone Hayes. A professor of developmental endocrinology at the University of California-Berkeley, Hayes published an article in BioScience (yes, it's peer-reviewed) in which he compared several previous experiments performed by others on the effect of atrazine on frogs' sexual differentiation. Seven of the studies performed on this popular corn pesticide were paid for by Syngenta, the manufacturer; nine others were funded by independent sources. Every one of the Syngenta-funded studies concluded that atrazine did not affect amphibian gonads, while all but one of the independent studies found that the chemical did have an effect, sometimes at the level of one-tenth part per billion in water. That's a stunningly small amount -- about the same as dropping one tablespoon in almost 40 million gallons.

The Syngenta studies didn't falsify data; they were simply designed to find "no effect," by exposing both the control and experimental groups to enough atrazine to affect their gonads. This type of testing isn't criminal. It's just bad science.

And here's more: last year, Alan Lockwood, professor of neurology and nuclear medicine at the State University of New York at Buffalo, published an analysis in the (peer-reviewed) American Journal of Public Health of the pesticide tests on humans that he could get access to through FOIA. In one, the consent form implied that the pesticide -- a known neurotoxin -- might make the subjects smarter. It didn't mention the actual possibilities of vomiting, convulsions, or death. In another, when four of six participants got sick and had to drop out, the experimenters based their positive results on the two remaining subjects. Lockwood said all the studies had "serious ethical or scientific deficiencies -- or both."

The idea of testing on human volunteers, halted in 1998, has resurfaced thanks to industry pressure and a "sympathetic ear" in the form of EPA administrator Stephen Johnson. But the notion still has powerful opponents -- Johnson's confirmation was blocked until he cancelled a plan to study pesticides' effects on low-income children -- and controversy has surrounded EPA's draft rules on such tests, released this fall. A public-comment period on the rules ends [ended] Dec. 12.

The son I was pregnant with when the cranberry bog was sprayed has developed slowly in different ways. He started talking so late the state sent a speech therapist over to tutor him. My older son, who was also there, can't draw. He's 5 now and gets frustrated trying to make even a stick figure. The one time he tried to draw me, it looked like an amoeba with three eyes.

Does this have to do with drifting pesticides? I can't tell you. None of us will know for sure the effects of these chemicals until there's good science involved -- science that isn't funded and reported by the very people making the chemicals in the first place.

Friday, December 16, 2005

Is George Monbiot a corporate oil shill? An article which is a study of displacement and misattribution

Here's how you make oil: abiotically.

Is George Monbiot an oil shill? First, there is the irony of Monbiot slamming all types of biodiesel (while only discussing corporate biodiesel moves recently, and while ignoring the whole consumer driven ecological modernization novelty of biodiesel as a social-political movement, instead of a business self-regulation movement.) Second, Monbiot is still popularizing the already exposed lie of the 'biotic peak oil' story. These two disinformative assumptions upon which his whole piece rests I am sure would of course be smiled upon within the boardrooms of Chevron and Shell.

I kept waiting for him to talk about the origins of the consumer pressures of ecological modernization based and waste-based biodiesel, though he totally neglects the reality that there is a huge differnce between wastes becoming used as as surrogate oil for transport fuels and corporations selling biodiesel. If read without a critical thinking cap, his whole article has the mistaken effect of dismissing the whole biodiesel movement, because of his unfair assumption that all biodiesel regardless of origins is the same. He artifically conflates two different issues: the grassroots biodiesel people converting their cars away from the control of the oil oligarchy and toward sustainability, and the oil oligarchy itself seeking to recapture those fleeing consumers and hitching them to novel unsustainable relations by co-opting the method of their escape. His article, I think very fairly, rails against corporate plantation biodiesel from palm oil, though he fails to make the distinction between different sources of biodiesel and instead, with a slippery slope sort of argument, artifically lumps together all biodiesel as evil, regardless of origins. This is very slick. It reads like corporate PR for the oil industry.

Certainly, Monbiot, sustainable consumers will be avoiding that corporate biodisel if they care about the environment, surely. However, he totally drops the ball on this one, and merges waste-based biodisel with corporate palm oil plantation biodisel, totally ignoring the ecological moderization aspects that differentiate the two sources of biodisel here. I suppose his fear is that corporations are attempting to take over the more grass roots markets of waste-based biodiesel and hitch them to unsustainable palm oil plantation biodiesel. The former is a sustainable ecological modernization strategy, driven by consumers altering their corporate-only friendly cars, toward more consumer friendly technology in their cars. The latter--corporate biodiesel--effectively lets consumers do this, though wants to take over the biodiesel sources to recapture and reclientelize them. This would break the ecological modernization inherent in consumer driven strategies of altering their cars for waste-based biodiesel, if consumers could be convinced to accept corporate palm oil biodiesel, which is is connected with deforestation. Monbiot comes out mistakenly equating the two. Why?

The lesson below, I suppose, is threefold: first, that desperation can unfortunately lead to the popularization of some alternatives that can be even worse, though only if you keep supporting corporate forms. That lesson is about biodiesel--though only corporate sold biodiesel. I kept waiting for Monbiot's article to talk about the interesting consumer driven ecological modernization premises of biodisel, though he makes the unsaid assumption that all biodiesel is the same and that all consumers will do is start buying biodisel at the pumps. And since this corporate biodiesel is linked to deforestation palm oil plantations, he suddenly twists it around and comes out against the 'whole thing'--which ignores that most biodisel is a grassroots phenomenon. However, the lesson is interesting in how corporate infrastuctures are starting their moves to take over the whole biodiesel market and make it just as polluting as before (from the corporate choices of source of the bio-oil, from palm plantations.).

I have nothing except support for those who want to bring about more consumer choice in energy supplies or consumer jurisdictional control over their modes of transporation--so I would get grouped with those who would promote cars being converted to something besides abiotic oil. However, definitely a corporate biodiesel fails to be an environmentally friendly solution, and can even be worse ecological politics than supporting monopolistic abotic oil politics. Though I think most political consumers will avoid that, there is a danger in 'getting lazy' about the ecological modernization premises of using wastes for transport fuel, when Shell starts selling biodiesel from deforestation based palm oil plantations just around the corner...

In Toward A Bioregional State of course, each particular watershed would have jurisdiction over what would be an optimal organization and method of fuel instead of at present under the thumb of a giant global oligarchy (or oily-garchy [Def: noun. Rule by a handful of interlocked oil corporations]). Oil is the largest financial sector of the global economy, followed with a close second of illicit drugs. [The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics]. This global oily-garchy is set up for destroying all consumer choices, creating a politically generated monopoly, and subsidizing itself via corruption acorss multiple states for executing its crony political extraction deals. For instance, the French justice department found out about Halliburton several years ago, when, under CEO Richard Cheney (1995-2000), Halliburton maintained special "bribery accounts" in Swiss banks for paying off Nigerian officials for corrupt oil contracts and preferences. With oil just as monopolistic as the drug money laundering economy, it perhaps is unsurprising that the huge oil infrastructure conglomerates like Halliburton have been fingered as intimately involved in global narcotraffic deals as well.

However, there is a second and more subtle lesson in this article than the first one mentioned above. This lesson can be applied in many places in your life instead of just in this article below. It is a lesson about avoiding haste in falling for the epistemological assumptions of your politial and economic enemies when you argue with them. In this case, the lies of the oily-garchy are adopted wholesale by Monbiot, one which he takes for his own without even verifying it--his assumptions about the "physical reality" of petroleum.

If he ever did this slight legwork (or via the internet, slight "mousework"), he would be aghast how much his worldview would change about this subject. If his first premise about the "equality" (sic, his assumption) or equivalency of waste-based biodiesel and palm oil biodiesel is wrong, his second premise about the biotic origins of petroleum that he uses for a comparison, is wrong as well.

There will be a future post about all I know about the politics, INSTEAD OF ECONOMICS, that have created a world based on oil clientelism from the 1860s onward. This would inevitably get into how oil is an abiotic creation, instead of a biotic creation. It will get into how oil, however was "sold as biotic" to the consumer in discourses though it is abiotic in nature and origin. There's plently of information from peer reviewed journals on this subject internationally now, though in a world run by spin (Monbiot's own versions included), such annoying facts about the reality of abiotic oil are dropped down the Orwellian memory oil-derrick hole.

The popularized and mostly unwitting ideological and material clientelism to the oily-garchy (even amongst its critics like Monbiot when he accepts baldly the oily-garchy's own propoganda and mental conditioning about 'physical reality' that has yet to accumulate any physical reality evidence to justify it), is a trenchant and sobering example of the mental/material power that international oil corporations have had over the political discourses about energy supplies since the late 1800s to the present. Even critics like Monbiot are only only regurgitating the corporate line of lies...

And if you have read the bioregional state book, this type of popularized mental/ideological and physical clientelism on such scales is the recipe for environmental degradation because it consolidates political and economic power as well as increasingly subsidizes and protects itself despite ongoing externalities that mount daily worldwide in pollution, whether corporate oil, corporate gas, corporate natural gas, or corporate coal politically protected energy hegemonies or monopolies. It's sad really that Monbiot seems to me now just as a mental captive of the oil corporations he is critiquing.

I have critiques throughout his article, below.

Worse Than Fossil Fuel [even though hydrocarbons are not organic in origin, or fossil in origin--see below]Biodiesel enthusiasts have accidentally invented the most carbon-intensive fuel on earthBy George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 6th December 2005

Over the past two years I have made an uncomfortable discovery. [You think you're uncomfortable now, just read these links about abiotic oil below.] Like most environmentalists [who still fall for the 'biotic peak oil line' and have yet to make the leap out of a cloistered oil industry disinformation campaign], I have been as blind to the constraints affecting our energy supply as my opponents have been to climate change. I now realise that I have entertained a belief in magic. [You still do if you believe in 'biotic oil' because no one, even Houdini, ever pulled off the creation of a 'biotic oil' that you presume flows in your car, moped, or fatuously fat SUV.]

Frankly I disagree with Monbiot that these constraints are physical. Nothing personal though. These 'constraints' are entirely social and political and technological--instead of physical.

In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that [if] the [non-]fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter [which they aren't] "containing 44×10^18 [44 with 18 zeros after it] grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet's current biota."(1) In plain English [disinformation], this means that every year we use four centuries' worth of plants and animals. [No! Wrong. Monbiot is making the oily-garchy's disinformative statement into reality: that oil is biotic in origin. Oil is not biotic in origin. It is simply our socio-political dependence upon the oil lobby--and many people's seeming mental dependence upon 'the doctrine of biotic oil' that is the issue here, instead of upon more solid ground of some presumed neutral physical reality--that keeps alternatives in technology from being developed. And if you don't believe in such things, well, pat yourself on the head for being a well trained mental slave. However, I offer the following hacksaws through the bars of your mental cell, below. Please use them and share them with your fellow inmates. See you outside the walls.

I will extend this list into a separate article of links. However, first, for now, I suggest a quick look at Bryon Wine's website, which is very well documented on [1] how much more efficient engines that run on gasoline could be and have been for 50 years--though the corporations that make engines that have interlocking directorates with the oil companies have little interest in making transportation a method of transport--only a method of selling a ton of it as inefficiently as possible to a captive oil market. Thus, one can see the politics of intentionally keeping inefficient technology in abiotic oil as the issue. The oily-garchy's regime of technology is simply a method of selling oil without alternatives, and politically squashing alternative infrastructures and alternative choices for the consumer in energy supplies. This is the perfect example of how a corrupt state state-driven and corrupt state-protected monopoly is handed to several powerful private corporations of the oily-garchy; Byron Wine laborously discusses as well [2] how energy efficiency attempts amidst the overlords of the oily-garchy regime has histoically been cause for police state action, as some inventors have been visited by the Department of Justice or even the U.S. military declaring that the inventor's more efficient machinery was now top secret in the interests of "national security." Certainly of course more energy efficient machinery would indeed be in the interests of real national security though from the point of view of a corrupt state, we can understand their motivations, though hardly forgive them, for their myopic reading of "corporate wealth administration without competition" as a form of "national security" instead of what it is--a recipe for national and international jeoporady and corruption under the oily-garchy.]

The idea that we can simply replace this fossil legacy [there's no evidence, Monbiot, of assumptions of "fossil fuel." Nada. Empirical proof has yet to ever be given for a fossil fuel. This is even recognized by scientific peer reviewed papers from Russia to the United States. Though the consumer serf/laity are instructed to avoid reading these (scientific) bibles out there that show that the mysterious 'Doctrine of Biotic Transmutation of the Holy Oil' has zero evidence accumulated for it. Such facts however ruin any empty-minded acceptance of worshipping contentedly at the high price regime of what is in reality an artificially created scarcity, with only a "scarce resource" discourse legitimation--since oil is abiotic in nature.

The history of human thoughts about oil, from the original Enlightenment-era assumptions of its potential organic origin, have failed to coup ANY evidence for supporting that biotic thesis. The data built up the other way: that oil is abiotic. However, the biotic thesis is pulled out on the oily-garchy's holy days and paraded in front of the populace because it is useful for them as they sell their (abiotic) oil: a biotic oil story is useful to them to justify their greed at selling abiotic, slowly replenishing oil at a high price because the salesmen proclaim its "rarity" and "innate scarcity" (sic), effectively displacing a social relation of scarity onto a false empirical physical referent as the blame, and then importing that lie back into social relations to justify themselves.

[2] "Natural Petroleum: NO Connection With Biological Matter; abiotic oil noted by oil industry,: published by peer reviewed Energia, in 2001. Seems oil industry publications up to four years ago got around to exposing the intermixed depopulation/artificial high-price structure of the oil market, as an energy scam on their own! Good for them. However, of coruse in a society run by spin, that's about the time when people began to trumpet the unscientific peak oil concept... Published in Energia, 2001, 22/3, 26-34. "The claims which have traditionally been put forward to argue a connection between natural petroleum and biological matter have been subjected to scientific scrutiny and have been established to be baseless." http://www.gasresources.net/DisposalBioClaims.htm or commentary here.

[3] In September, the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published an interesting study by a distinguished group of academics (as opposed to the oil industry spokesmen that the Peakers routinely cite): "We present in situ observations of hydrocarbon formation via carbonate reduction at upper mantle pressures and temperatures. Methane was formed [ABIOTICALLY] from FeO, CaCO3-calcite, and water at pressures between 5 and 11 GPa and temperatures ranging from 500°C to 1,500°C. The results are shown to be consistent with multiphase thermodynamic calculations based on the statistical mechanics of soft particle mixtures. The study demonstrates THE EXISTENCE OF ABIOGENIC PATHWAYS for the formation of hydrocarbons in the Earth's interior and suggests that the hydrocarbon budget of the bulk Earth may be larger than conventionally assumed." here

[4] An experiment creating oil compounds from such abiotic pathways has recently been successful, further verifying this: "NOBEL PRIZE WINNER publishes data on Abiotic Pressured Rocks into Methane Hydrocarbons," published in Harvard Magazine, data from professor of the Chemistry department,..."[R]esearch coauthored by Dudley Herschbach, Baird Research Professor of Science and recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry, questions thinking/disinformation on 'biotic oil' theory. Published last fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study describes how investigators combined three abiotic (non-living) materials -- water (H2O), limestone (CaCO3), and iron oxide (FeO) -- and crushed the mixture together with the same intense pressure found deep below the earth's surface. This process created methane (CH4), the major component of natural gas. ...[A]ssertions about methane and oil really caught Herschbach's attention. "He said there wasn't much chance that you could do a laboratory experiment to test this," Herschbach reports. "And I thought, 'Holy smoke! We could do this with the diamond anvil cell.'" And they did. Poof. Methane.

[5] And the precious articles of author and commentator Dave McGowan, summarized here and here and here: "Stalin & Abiotic Oil versus international corporate oil's PLANNED GLOBAL HOLOCAUST," 'PEAK OIL' THEORY BITES THE DUST: By 1951, what has been called the Modern Russian-Ukrainian Theory of Deep, Abiotic Petroleum Origins was born. A healthy amount of scientific debate followed for the next couple of decades, during which time the theory, initially formulated by geologists, based on observational data, was validated through the rigorous quantitative work of chemists, physicists and thermodynamicists. For the last couple of decades, the theory has been accepted as established fact by virtually the entire scientific community of the (former) Soviet Union. It is backed up by literally thousands of published studies in prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Back to Monbiot:

- and the extraordinary power densities it gives us - with ambient energy is the stuff of science fiction. There is simply no substitute for cutting back. [Untrue. He is the victim of the double displacement I described above.] But substitutes are being sought everywhere. They are being promoted today at the climate talks in Montreal, by states - such as ours - which seek to avoid the hard decisions climate change demands. And at least one of them is worse than the fossil fuel burning it replaces.

The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuel from vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I have ever been sent by the supporters of the Iraq war. The biodiesel missionaries, I discovered, are as vociferous in their denial as the executives of Exxon. [Oh the ironies, that Exxon executives I am sure if they read this Monbiot piece, are smiling quietly that he accepts their double displacement about abiotic oil.] I am now prepared to admit that my previous column was wrong. But they're not going to like it. I was wrong because I underestimated the fuel's destructive impact.

Before I go any further, I should make it clear that [the ecological modernization principles of] turning used chip fat into motor fuel is a good thing. The people slithering around all day in vats of filth are perfoming a service to society. But there is enough waste cooking oil in the UK to meet one 380th of our demand for road transport fuel(2). Beyond that, the trouble begins.

When I wrote about it last year, I thought that the biggest problem caused by biodiesel was that it set up a competition for land(3). Arable land that would otherwise have been used to grow food would instead be used to grow fuel. But now I find that something even worse is happening. The biodiesel industry has accidentally invented the world's most carbon-intensive fuel.

In promoting biodiesel - as the European Union, the British and US governments and thousands of environmental campaigners do - you might imagine that you are creating a market for old chip fat, or rapeseed oil, or oil from algae grown in desert ponds. In reality you are creating a market for the most destructive crop on earth.

Last week, the chairman of Malaysia's Federal Land Development Authority announced that he was about to build a new biodiesel plant(4). His was the ninth such decision in four months. Four new refineries are being built in Peninsula Malaysia, one in Sarawak and two in Rotterdam(5). Two foreign consortia - one German, one American - are setting up rival plants in Singapore(6). All of them will be making biodiesel from the same source: oil from palm trees.

"The demand for biodiesel," the Malaysian Star reports, "will come from the European Community ... This fresh demand ... would, at the very least, take up most of Malaysia's crude palm oil inventories"(7). Why? Because it's cheaper than biodiesel made from any other crop. [In other words, the whole ecological modernization political premises of grassroots organizations are being subverted and turned into a novel corporate clientelistic market commodity.]

In September, Friends of the Earth published a report about the impacts of palm oil production. "Between 1985 and 2000," it found, "the development of oil-palm plantations was responsible for an estimated 87 per cent of deforestation in Malaysia"(8). In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares of forest has been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million hectares is scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5m in Indonesia.

Almost all the remaining forest is at risk. Even the famous Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan is being ripped apart by oil planters. The orang-utan is likely to become extinct in the wild. Sumatran rhinos, tigers, gibbons, tapirs, proboscis monkeys and thousands of other species could go the same way. Thousands of indigenous people have been evicted from their lands, and some 500 Indonesians have been tortured when they tried to resist(9). The forest fires which every so often smother the region in smog are mostly started by the palm growers. The entire region is being turned into a gigantic vegetable oil field.

Before oil palms, which are small and scrubby, are planted, vast forest trees, containing a much greater store of carbon, must be felled and burnt. Having used up the drier lands, the plantations are now moving into the swamp forests, which grow on peat. When they've cut the trees, the planters drain the ground. As the peat dries it oxidises, releasing even more carbon dioxide than the trees. In terms of its impact on both the local and global environments, palm biodiesel is more destructive than crude oil from Nigeria.

The British government understands this. In the report it published last month, when it announced that it will obey the European Union and ensure that 5.75% of our transport fuel comes from plants by 2010, it admitted that "the main environmental risks are likely to be those concerning any large expansion in biofuel feedstock production, and particularly in Brazil (for sugar cane) and South East Asia (for palm oil plantations)."(10)

[However, Monbiot ignores that Brazilians, because they have different kinds of 'flex' engines available that allow the consumer to switch between oil and cane fuel without problems. ]

It suggested that the best means of dealing with the problem was to prevent environmentally destructive fuels from being imported. The government asked its consultants whether a ban would infringe world trade rules. The answer was yes: "mandatory environmental criteria ... would greatly increase the risk of international legal challenge to the policy as a whole"(11). So it dropped the idea of banning imports, and called for "some form of voluntary scheme" instead(12). Knowing that the creation of this market will lead to a massive surge in imports of palm oil, knowing that there is nothing meaningful it can do to prevent them, and knowing that they will accelarate rather than ameliorate climate change, the government has decided to go ahead anyway. [Monbiot sounds like an oil industry salesman right now, doesn't he? Fear of another displacement of bio crop. However, his article trails on without addressing that consumers can of course avoid buying such corporate palm oil biodisel. Surely that is one solution. However, a solution that is still

At other times it happily defies the European Union. But what the EU wants and what the government wants are the same. "It is essential that we balance the increasing demand for travel," the government's report says, "with our goals for protecting the environment"(13). Until recently, we had a policy of reducing the demand for travel. Now, though no announcement has been made, that policy has gone. Like the Tories in the early 1990s, the Labour administration seeks to accommodate demand, however high it rises. Figures obtained last week by the campaigning group Road Block show that for the widening of the M1 alone the government will pay £3.6 billion - more than it is spending on its entire climate change programme(14). Instead of attempting to reduce demand, it is trying to alter supply. It is prepared to sacrifice the South East Asian rainforests in order to be seen to do something, and to allow motorists to feel better about themselves.

All this illustrates the futility of the technofixes now being pursued in Montreal. Trying to meet a rising demand for fuel is madness, wherever the fuel might come from. [That phrase "wherever the fuel may come from" shows his cluelessness to the different ecological modernization premises of consumer driven moves for integrating waste-based biodiesel.] The hard decisions have been avoided, and another portion of the biosphere is going up in smoke.

2. The British Association for Biofuels and Oils estimates the volume at 100,000 tonnes a year. BABFO, no date. Memorandum to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. link to www.biodiesel.co.uk

3. link to www.monbiot.com

4. Tamimi Omar, 1st December 2005. Felda to set up largest biodiesel plant. The Edge Daily. link to www.theedgedaily.com

AS MY ADDENDUM, I place these caveats to clarify the position here. This is what I learned from assembling the same arguments over and over in answering attackers, and a clarification of my position:

(1) there is only scientific evidence that oil is abiotically created, period--there is no evidence physically for oil being of a fossil-fuel origin--see first links; that has always been a total scam to justify the high prices of oil, it came from theories of 250 years ago--that never ever gathered any evidence for their justification. The total scam of the "fossil fuel theory" were just carried over from the 1700s ideas because they alone among ideas about oil were the only convenient ways to frame (abiotic) oil falsely as a "scarce and unreplenishable resource."

(2) the "tragedy" they keep softening people up for is entirely their own design. The dislocations are not going to be an accidental oversight or are going to be the effect of some physical reality of the issue of "supply and demand" etc.--all information about oil of course is entirely private anyway, why trust anything they say as for their motivations particularly when the whole framing is designed to make something social like production seem entirely neutral? moreover, they want you to believe that your life dislocation will be "damned bad, though not our fault!". However, the dislocation will be their fault. This is because they are (2a) intentionally and socially shutting down oil production currently--even from profitable California refineries to make it look like "oil is peaking naturally." Even other oil companies that want to buy these refineries are being denied them! And the corrupt U.S.A. is looking the other way. Links above. (2b) the other part of the intentionality is that they are keeping other technological frameworks of energy offline to facilitate the dislocation they want POLITICALLY. (2c) What backs up (2b) is that oil companies in the past 10 years have been buying up the "alternative energy" market patents. However, you don't hear about them seriously using these patents. What you do hear about is the repressive attempt to confiscate all of this alternative technology, like that Ford electric car/truck that was in the news recently. There are markets for these alternative technologies out there. However, they are intentionally not being filled for a political purpose of dislocation. (2d) This dislocation will suit them politically to usher in and justify a police state crackdown after they created the "oil shock" context for themselves. (2e) The 21st century "oil shock" will be just like their practice run "oil shock" in the 1970s. (2f) There were Congressional investigations of their artificial 1970s "oil shock" mass social manipulation tests then (in the 1970s). There are none now. Oil men are in the White House. And they are the same regrouping from the late 1970s. Thus, what these people were working on in the 1970s--all those plans--are being dusted off.

(3) Environmentalism is one large movement. However, there is a corporate-fascist wing within environmentalism. (3a) This is the totally unpunished Rockefeller-oilcorp-media-eugenics wing--the same connections since the early 20th century! Their discredited and very openly discussed 20th century eugenic and depopulationist goals are still there: they have only been now "green-coated". These people (not all people) are using the cloak of environmentalism to justify fascist consolidation and eugenics in the Third World--and soon the First World. Military biological warfare techniques will be utilized as well on civilian populations. See above discussion and links to that book. There are of course other books on this topic. It hardly takes a genius to note that if you are a fascist and you have the stranglehold on the world's oil based energy, and you are in the biological warfare research as well, you would utilize your corporate and military institutional advantage to promote your political eugenic goals--even against your own economic interest--if what you really were after was political power. (3b) The depopulationist Club of Rome for instance was filled with the same people (and oil company people) who were helping the Nazis in WWII.

(4) It is important to understand the physical reality of what is going on (abiotic oil) COMBINED with the political issues of these die-hard fascist-eugenicists in the oil companies. Not one or the other. Both. Without thinking about both, you are unable to seriously make plans for what to do or know what is really going on. Instead, remember to always ask the question: "Is what I am being coached to want, really someone else's interest?"

(5) My advice is get yourself set with non-oil based technologies of energy, perhaps a group-friend investment in something good. Oil is being POLITICALLY NOT ECONOMICALLY shut down, because it is on their political schedule. Your mass dislocation reactions are going to be managed, similar to the 1970s. Don't let that happen and you will be less manipulated and held hostage to them. (5a) My additional advice is to protect yourself the best you know how (healthy foods, vitamins, don't trust mass "inoculation" campaigns) from their coming (it's already here) military biowarfare on the world's population.

(6) If getting more information out about these high level criminal behaviors helps to slow or stop it--or even get the real actors in jail--you can bet I or others are going to do our best.

(7) I never even suggested that abiotic oil would be GOOD. I have always thought that abiotic oil that puts up tons of atmospheric carbon is a foolish energy choice. I'm not supporting abiotic oil's continuity.

No Vaccines, No Autism, Noted Among Amish; Everyone else: an Autism Epidemic from When Mercury Dosages Tripled in U.S. Mandated Vaccines for Children

Dr. Ayoub has given Congressional testimony on the now published facts of higher mercury doses connected with expanding autism in United States children. He says representatives of the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration left the room as he was starting to summarize his data, so they could avoid cross examination about now published findings. CDC and FDA knows they are harming you and your children. Go to YouTube for the remainder of Dr. Ayoub's talk, linked here.

Dr. Ayoub stresses that autism is reversible. He discusses ways to open up a child's metabolism to excrete the mercury that causes autism. And the autism goes away.

Dr. Mercola Interviews Dr. David Ayoub Part 1/4 (2009)10:25 min.

Mercola.com founder, Dr. Joseph Mercola and Dr. David Ayoub discuss the concern about giving the swine flu vaccine in women who are pregnant. Part 1. Part two continues at YouTube here.

Dr. Ayoub stresses that autism is reversible. He discusses ways to open up a child's metabolism to excrete the mercury that causes autism. And the autism goes away.

This is what is called a 'natural experiment'. Though the experiment is on you, instead of the Amish and homeschoolers. Note connection in second article below. Meanwhile for the rest of us:

Vaccines are the only medicines that Americans are encouraged to receive as a condition for attendance in school and day care, and for some types of employment. Parents who receive federal assistance are also required to show proof that their children have been vaccinated--though the legal wording always is that is IS VOLUNTARY SO THE STATE CAN AVOID LAWSUITS OF KNOWN HARM. All U.S. states have some legal procedure to avoid "encouraged" vaccinations. (Read below comments on how to find your state's procedures.) While the mandate for which vaccines must be included on the vaccine schedule is a state mandate (because the federal government is afraid of legal culpability so vaccination is a state law only), it is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its Advisory Committee that make the recommendations to which the majority of states adhere when determining mandates. The current autism epidemic actually began in the late 1980s when a large number of new vaccines were added to the schedule. Though the autism epidemic was avoided by the Amish, who are outside these regulations.The blame is at least partially attributable to the failure of government officials to keep track of the cumulative amounts of mercury as they added triple-dose-vaccines to the schedule and the amount of thimerosal was multiplied by three. Additionally, the blame is clearly on the conflicts of interest in the FDA's own "Committee of 300", which has multiple documented crony links..

First, once more this is a prime example of why a "bodily integrity" Amendment is required (amongs other things, mentioned in the book Toward a Bioregional State), instead of forced mass innoculations with long term unknown effects. Second, this is an example of how corruption can lead to combined human health, environmental, and economic externalties being imposed on you from the state.

CHICAGO, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- It's a far piece from the horse-and-buggies of Lancaster County, Pa., to the cars and freeways of Cook County, Ill.

But thousands of children cared for by Homefirst Health Services in metropolitan Chicago have at least two things in common with thousands of Amish children in rural Lancaster: They have never been vaccinated. And they don't have autism.

"We have a fairly large practice. We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we've taken care of over the years, and I don't think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines," said Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst's medical director who founded the practice in 1973. Homefirst doctors have delivered more than 15,000 babies at home, and thousands of them have never been vaccinated.

The few autistic children Homefirst sees were vaccinated before their families became patients, Eisenstein said. "I can think of two or three autistic children who we've delivered their mother's next baby, and we aren't really totally taking care of that child -- they have special care needs. But they bring the younger children to us. I don't have a single case that I can think of that wasn't vaccinated."

The autism rate in Illinois public schools is 38 per 10,000, according to state Education Department data; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the national rate of autism spectrum disorders at 1 in 166 -- 60 per 10,000.

"We do have enough of a sample," Eisenstein said. "The numbers are too large to not see it. We would absolutely know. We're all family doctors. If I have a child with autism come in, there's no communication. It's frightening. You can't touch them. It's not something that anyone would miss."

No one knows what causes autism, but federal health authorities say it isn't childhood immunizations. Some parents and a small minority of doctors and scientists, however, assert vaccines are responsible.

This column has been looking for autism in never-vaccinated U.S. children in an effort to shed light on the issue. We went to Chicago to meet with Eisenstein at the suggestion of a reader, and we also visited Homefirst's office in northwest suburban Rolling Meadows. Homefirst has four other offices in the Chicago area and a total of six doctors.

Eisenstein stresses his observations are not scientific. "The trouble is this is just anecdotal in a sense, because what if every autistic child goes somewhere else and (their family) never calls us or they moved out of state?"

In practice, that's unlikely to account for the pronounced absence of autism, says Eisenstein, who also has a bachelor's degree in statistics, a master's degree in public health and a law degree.

Homefirst follows state immunization mandates, but Illinois allows religious exemptions if parents object based either on tenets of their faith or specific personal religious views. Homefirst does not exclude or discourage such families. Eisenstein, in fact, is author of the book "Don't Vaccinate Before You Educate!" and is critical of the CDC's vaccination policy in the 1990s, when several new immunizations were added to the schedule, including Hepatitis B as early as the day of birth. Several of the vaccines -- HepB included -- contained a mercury-based preservative that has since been phased out of most childhood vaccines in the United States.

Medical practices with Homefirst's approach to immunizations are rare. "Because of that, we tend to attract families that have questions about that issue," said Dr. Paul Schattauer, who has been with Homefirst for 20 years and treats "at least" 100 children a week.

Schattauer seconded Eisenstein's observations. "All I know is in my practice I don't see autism. There is no striking 1-in-166," he said.

Earlier this year we reported the same phenomenon in the mostly unvaccinated Amish. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding told us the Amish "have genetic connectivity that would make them different from populations that are in other sectors of the United States." Gerberding said, however, studies "could and should be done" in more representative unvaccinated groups -- if they could be found and their autism rate documented.

Chicago is America's prototypical "City of Big Shoulders," to quote Carl Sandburg, and Homefirst's mostly middle-class families seem fairly representative. A substantial number are conservative Christians who home-school their children. They are mostly white, but the Homefirst practice also includes black and Hispanic families and non-home-schooling Jews, Catholics and Muslims.

They tend to be better educated, follow healthier diets and breast-feed their children much longer than the norm -- half of Homefirst's mothers are still breast-feeding at two years. Also, because Homefirst relies less on prescription drugs including antibiotics as a first line of treatment, these children have less exposure to other medicines, not just vaccines.

Schattauer, interviewed at the Rolling Meadows office, said his caseload is too limited to draw conclusions about a possible link between vaccines and autism. "With these numbers you'd have a hard time proving or disproving anything," he said. "You can only get a feeling about it.

"In no way would I be an advocate to stand up and say we need to look at vaccines, because I don't have the science to say that," Schattauer said. "But I don't think the science is there to say that it's not."

Schattauer said Homefirst's patients also have significantly less childhood asthma and juvenile diabetes compared to national rates. An office manager who has been with Homefirst for 17 years said she is aware of only one case of severe asthma in an unvaccinated child.

"Sometimes you feel frustrated because you feel like you've got a pretty big secret," Schattauer said. He argues for more research on all those disorders, independent of political or business pressures.

The asthma rate among Homefirst patients is so low it was noticed by the Blue Cross group with which Homefirst is affiliated, according to Eisenstein.

"In the alternative-medicine network which Homefirst is part of, there are virtually no cases of childhood asthma, in contrast to the overall Blue Cross rate of childhood asthma which is approximately 10 percent," he said. "At first I thought it was because they (Homefirst's children) were breast-fed, but even among the breast-fed we've had asthma. We have virtually no asthma if you're breast-fed and not vaccinated."

Because the diagnosis of asthma is based on emergency-room visits and hospital admissions, Eisenstein said, Homefirst's low rate is hard to dispute. "It's quantifiable -- the definition is not reliant on the doctor's perception of asthma."

Several studies have found a risk of asthma from vaccination; others have not. Studies that include never-vaccinated children generally find little or no asthma in that group.

Earlier this year Florida pediatrician Dr. Jeff Bradstreet said there is virtually no autism in home-schooling families who decline to vaccinate for religious reasons -- lending credence to Eisenstein's observations.

"It's largely non-existent," said Bradstreet, who treats children with autism from around the country. "It's an extremely rare event."

Bradstreet has a son whose autism he attributes to a vaccine reaction at 15 months. His daughter has been home-schooled, he describes himself as a "Christian family physician," and he knows many of the leaders in the home-school movement.

"There was this whole subculture of folks who went into home-schooling so they would never have to vaccinate their kids," he said. "There's this whole cadre who were never vaccinated for religious reasons."

In that subset, he said, "unless they were massively exposed to mercury through lots of amalgams (mercury dental fillings in the mother) and/or big-time fish eating, I've not had a single case."

Federal health authorities and mainstream medical groups emphatically dismiss any link between autism and vaccines [though without providing any evidence of their dismissal, and note that they are talking out of both sides of their mouths below], including the mercury-based preservative thimerosal. Last year a panel of the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies, said there is no evidence of such a link, and funding should henceforth go to "promising" research. [Saying that there is "no evidence" can be just doubletalk, because it may imply that they have refused to research the issue instead of really have evidence of a lack of relationship.]

Thimerosal, which is 49.6 percent ethyl mercury by weight, was phased out of most U.S. childhood immunizations beginning in 1999, but the CDC recommends flu shots for pregnant women and last year began recommending them for children 6 to 23 months old. Most of those shots contain thimerosal.

[Note despite the CDC saying tutt-tutt, of course it's safe, they themselves phase it out from 1999. Makes no sense unless they are lying to the public. Though it's O.K. to destroy minds in the Third World still I guess, according to other institutions:]

Thimerosal-preserved vaccines are currently being injected into millions of children in developing countries around the world. "My mandate ... is to make sure at the end of the day that 100,000,000 are immunized ... this year, next year and for many years to come ... and that will have to be with thimerosal-containing vaccines," said John Clements of the World Health Organization at a June 2000 meeting called by the CDC. [Some Third World vaccines, even according to recent books on the subject, have been used by the U.N. and the W.H.O. (World Health Organization) to inject--without knowledge of the patient as depopulation agents either thorugh cancer causing "monkey viruses" or through typical birth control chemicals that have been found in "vaccines" in India for example.]

That meeting was held to review data that thimerosal might be linked with autism and other neurological problems. But in 2004 the Institute of Medicine panel said evidence against a link is so strong [er, above they said they had "no evidence...", now they say they have evidence?] that health authorities, "whether in the United States or other countries, should not include autism as a potential risk" when formulating immunization policies.

But where is the simple, straightforward study of autism in never-vaccinated U.S. children?

Based on our admittedly anecdotal and limited reporting among the Amish, the home-schooled and now Chicago's Homefirst, that may prove to be a significant omission.

--

This ongoing series on the roots and rise of autism welcomes comment. E-mail: dolmsted@upi.com

Vaccines are the only medicines that Americans are mandated to receive as a condition for attendance in school and day care, and for some types of employment. Parents who receive federal assistance are also required to show proof that their children have been vaccinated.

While the mandate for which vaccines must be included on the vaccine schedule is a state mandate, it is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its Advisory Committee that make the recommendations to which the majority of states adhere when determining mandates. ***The current epidemic actually began in the late 1980s when a large number of new vaccines were added to the schedule.***

The blame is at least partially attributable to the failure of government officials to keep track of the cumulative amounts of mercury as they added triple-dose-vaccines to the schedule and the amount of thimerosal was multiplied by three.

...

By October 25, 2000, Committee Chairman, Dan Burton (R-IN), was trying to get the substance out of vaccines as quickly as possible and sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services, asking the director to get the FDA to recall all vaccines with thimerosal.

“We all know and accept that mercury is a neurotoxin, and yet the FDA has failed to recall the 50 vaccines that contain Thimerosal,” Burton wrote. “Every day that mercury-containing vaccines remain on the market is another day HHS is putting 8,000 children at risk,” he said.

“I implore you to conduct a full recall of these products,” he wrote. “If the only action ... is a gradual phase out, children will continue to be put at risk every day,” Burton warned. “These vaccines will continue to be injected in children for years to come - putting our nation's most vulnerable population ... at risk for mercury poisoning," he added.

[The U.S.'s own "Committee of 300"] The decisions of the 300 experts who sit on the FDA's 18 advisory committees affect billions of dollars in sales. The panel members play a crucial role in determining what drugs will be approved and participate in just about every major decision related to industry regulation. When it comes to vaccines, the large population in the USA transforms into a lucrative customer base when our government makes vaccines mandatory and keeps adding more and more to the list [in a captive market monopoly]. Between 2003 and 2006, it was predicted that the annual global market for vaccines would rise from $6 billion to $10 billion, by Mark Benjamin for United Press International on July 21, 2003. Investors follow the decisions made by the advisory panels closely. A favorable vote by a committee can add hundreds of millions of dollars to a company's stock value which also means the potential for corruption in the panels is enormous. In a July 18, 2000 hearing, Burton mentioned the problem. "We have a lot of doctors who serve on Federal advisory committees who have serious conflicts-of-interest problems. They’re allowed to vote on vaccines made by companies that they get money from." An analysis conducted by USA Today, of 159 FDA advisory committee meetings that took place between January 1, 1998, and June 30, 2000, revealed conflicts of interest were wide-spread:

At 92% of the meetings, at least one member had a financial conflict of interest.

At least one committee member had a financial stake in the topic under review at 146 of 159 advisory committee meetings.

At 55% of meetings, half or more of the FDA advisers had conflicts of interest.

At the 102 meetings dealing with the fate of a specific drug, 33% of the experts had a financial conflict.

Many parents are now refusing to vaccinate their children because they believe there is an on-going conspiracy by government officials and the pharmaceutical industry to boost profits by mandating unnecessary vaccines, while at the same time, denying their potential for harm. Congressman Burton addressed this issue in a June 19, 2002 hearing: "Parents are increasingly concerned that the Department may be inherently conflicted in its multiple roles of promoting immunization, regulating manufacturers, looking for adverse events, managing the vaccine injury compensation program, and developing new vaccines. Families share my concern that vaccine manufacturers have too much influence as well."

...the rising numbers in special education classes in the nation's public school system provides a clear measurement of how wide-spread the epidemic has become. State by state statistics for students with autism from the Department of Education for the 12-year period between 1992-93 and 2003-04, are almost unbelievable. For instance, in Ohio in 1992-93, there were only 22 cases of autism, by 2003-04 there were 5,146. In Illinois, there were only 5 cases twelve years ago and 6,005 in 2003-04. Wisconsin had 18 cases of autism in 1992-93 and the numbers rose to 3,259 in 2003-04.

A growing number of professionals in the health care field are reporting that a relationship exists between the epidemic in neurodevelopmental disorders of autism, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, and speech or language delay all across the country, and the use of thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative used in childhood vaccines.

Vaccines are the only medicines that Americans are mandated to receive as a condition for attendance in school and day care, and for some types of employment. Parents who receive federal assistance are also required to show proof that their children have been vaccinated.

While the mandate for which vaccines must be included on the vaccine schedule is a state mandate, it is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its Advisory Committee that make the recommendations to which the majority of states adhere when determining mandates. The current epidemic actually began in the late 1980s when a large number of new vaccines were added to the schedule.

The blame is at least partially attributable to the failure of government officials to keep track of the cumulative amounts of mercury as they added triple-dose-vaccines to the schedule and the amount of thimerosal was multiplied by three.

Each new vaccine contained 25 micrograms of mercury and according to Professor Lynn Adams, of Radford University, who specializes in autism, by 1999, a study determined that the average child received 33 doses of 10 different vaccines by the age 5.

Elected lawmakers first became aware of the problem in 1999, when the House Committee on Government Reform initiated an investigation into the dangers of mercury exposure. An alarm rang early about the exposure of children to thimerosal.

By October 25, 2000, Committee Chairman, Dan Burton (R-IN), was trying to get the substance out of vaccines as quickly as possible and sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services, asking the director to get the FDA to recall all vaccines with thimerosal.

“We all know and accept that mercury is a neurotoxin, and yet the FDA has failed to recall the 50 vaccines that contain Thimerosal,” Burton wrote. “Every day that mercury-containing vaccines remain on the market is another day HHS is putting 8,000 children at risk,” he said.

“I implore you to conduct a full recall of these products,” he wrote. “If the only action ... is a gradual phase out, children will continue to be put at risk every day,” Burton warned. “These vaccines will continue to be injected in children for years to come - putting our nation's most vulnerable population ... at risk for mercury poisoning," he added.

The Reform Committee soon discovered that regulatory agencies were still allowing thimerosal to be used decades after the recognition that it was harmful. The Committee was told that the Food and Drug Administration, (FDA), uses a subjective barometer in determining when a product that has known risks can remain on the market. According to the agency:

"at the heart of all FDA’s product evaluation decisions is a judgment about whether a new product’s benefits to users will outweigh its risks. No regulated product is totally risk-free, so these judgments are important. The FDA will allow a product to present more of a risk when its potential benefit is great—especially for products used to treat serious, life-threatening conditions."

The argument that the known risks of infectious diseases outweighs any potential risk of neurological damage is one [subjective decision] that has continuously been used by officials. The FDA claims that any risk from thimerosal is theoretical because no proof of harm exists.

However, after its review of scientific literature and listening to the testimony of witnesses, the Committee found plenty of evidence to support the fact that thimerosal posed a grave risk. "The possible risk for harm from either low dose chronic or one time high level (bolus dose) exposure to thimerosal is not "theoretical," but very real and documented in the medical literature," the Committee said.

The Committee also discovered that regulatory agencies have never required drug companies to conduct studies on the use of thimerosal. During a June 20, 2002, hearing, Burton questioned officials from the FDA and CDC and said, "You mean to tell me that since 1929, we've been using Thimerosal and the only test that you know of is from 1929, and every one of those people had mennigitis, and they all died?"

In his opening statement at a July 18, 2000, hearing, Burton said:

"We assume that the FDA would protect our children from exposure to any level of mercury through drugs. But that hasn’t been the case. Thimerosal was first marketed in 1930 and has become the most widely used preservative in vaccines. It is present in over 50 licensed vaccines."

"The FDA recently acknowledged that in the first six months of life, children get more mercury than is considered safe by the EPA," Burton noted. "The truth is that sometimes kids go to their doctor’s office and get four or five vaccines at the same time," he added.

"My grandson received vaccines for nine different diseases in one day," Burton said. "He may have been exposed to 62.5 micrograms of mercury in one day through his vaccines."

"According to his weight, the maximum safe level of mercury he should be exposed to in one day is 1.51 micrograms," Burton advised. "This is forty-one times the amount at which harm can be caused," he added.

In his opening remarks at a June 19, 2002, hearing, Burton described the devastation of witnessing the correlation between vaccines and autism.

"My only grandson became autistic right before my eyes – shortly after receiving his federally recommended and state-mandated vaccines. Without a full explanation of what was in the shots being given, my talkative, playful, outgoing, healthy, grandson Christian was subjected to very high levels of mercury through his vaccines. He also received the MMR vaccine. Within a few days he was showing signs of autism."

People often wonder why regulatory officials would protect drug makers. In large part, because the CDC and FDA policy decisions are made through advisory panels whose members have financial relationships with the same companies they are charged to regulate.

The decisions of the 300 experts who sit on the FDA's 18 advisory committees affect billions of dollars in sales. The panel members play a crucial role in determining what drugs will be approved and participate in just about every major decision related to industry regulation.

When it comes to vaccines, the large population in the USA transforms into a lucrative customer base when our government makes vaccines mandatory and keeps adding more and more to the list. Between 2003 and 2006, it was predicted that the annual global market for vaccines would rise from $6 billion to $10 billion, by Mark Benjamin for United Press International on July 21, 2003.

Investors follow the decisions made by the advisory panels closely. A favorable vote by a committee can add hundreds of millions of dollars to a company's stock value which also means the potential for corruption in the panels is enormous.

In a July 18, 2000 hearing, Burton mentioned the problem. "We have a lot of doctors who serve on Federal advisory committees who have serious conflicts-of-interest problems. They’re allowed to vote on vaccines made by companies that they get money from."

An analysis conducted by USA Today, of 159 FDA advisory committee meetings that took place between January 1, 1998, and June 30, 2000, revealed conflicts of interest were wide-spread:

At 92% of the meetings, at least one member had a financial conflict of interest.

At least one committee member had a financial stake in the topic under review at 146 of 159 advisory committee meetings.

At 55% of meetings, half or more of the FDA advisers had conflicts of interest.

At the 102 meetings dealing with the fate of a specific drug, 33% of the experts had a financial conflict.

Many parents are now refusing to vaccinate their children because they believe there is an on-going conspiracy by government officials and the pharmaceutical industry to boost profits by mandating unnecessary vaccines, while at the same time, denying their potential for harm. Congressman Burton addressed this issue in a June 19, 2002 hearing:

"Parents are increasingly concerned that the Department may be inherently conflicted in its multiple roles of promoting immunization, regulating manufacturers, looking for adverse events, managing the vaccine injury compensation program, and developing new vaccines. Families share my concern that vaccine manufacturers have too much influence as well."

Burton also noted the need to get honest about the current epidemic. "As representatives of the people, we have a responsibility to ensure that our public health officials are adequately and honestly addressing this epidemic and its possible links to vaccine injury," he said.

In May 2003, the Reform Committee, released a report that said the "FDA and the CDC failed in their duty to be vigilant as new vaccines containing thimerosal were approved and added to the immunization schedule."

As an example the report cited the Hepatitis B vaccine. "When the Hepatitis B and Haemophilus Influenzae Type b vaccines were added to the recommended schedule of childhood immunizations, the cumulative amount of ethylmercury to which children were exposed nearly tripled." The report identified thimerosal as the cause of the autism and chastised the FDA:

“Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic. This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal and the sharper eyes of infant exposure to this known neurotoxin. The public health agencies failure to act is indicative of institutional malfeasance for self protection and misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry.”

Many people have not yet recognized the seriousness of the epidemic, largely because the majority of people have not seen many autistic children due to the fact that parents seldom take their affected children out in public because of the difficulty in trying to control them in a strange environment.

However, the rising numbers in special education classes in the nation's public school system provides a clear measurement of how wide-spread the epidemic has become. State by state statistics for students with autism from the Department of Education for the 12-year period between 1992-93 and 2003-04, are almost unbelievable. For instance, in Ohio in 1992-93, there were only 22 cases of autism, by 2003-04 there were 5,146. In Illinois, there were only 5 cases twelve years ago and 6,005 in 2003-04. Wisconsin had 18 cases of autism in 1992-93 and the numbers rose to 3,259 in 2003-04.

The true reality of these statistics will register in the not too distant future. "With eighty percent of autistic Americans under the age of 18, the dramatic impact of this crisis will be felt by taxpayers in the coming years when these autistic children become adults," says Anne McElroy Dachel, Media Relations Coordinator for the National Autism Association.

Most vaccines on the immunization schedule now are said to be thimerosal-free but some still do contain trace amounts. "An exception is the flu shot, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends for pregnant women and for infants 6 to 23 months old,” advises Don Olmsted in United Press International on November 19, 2005.

For 6 to 23-month-old infants, the schedule calls for two flu shots that contain 12.5 micrograms of thimerosal each to be given a month apart. “That total of is the same amount that was in vaccines some parents believe triggered their child's autism," Olmsted advises. "And some of them believe in utero exposure to mercury via the pregnant mother might be the most dangerous exposure of all,” he said.

When deciding whether mercury-laced flu vaccines are safe for children, parents had better think long and hard before rolling the dice.

Evelyn Pringleepringle05@yahoo.com

(Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for Independent Media TV and an investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption in government)

I'm moving this to the main wire because I think it bears more awareness particularly because for a long time the companies and international programs involved in vaccination programs simultaneously running covert operations of biowarfare connected with eugenics ideologies.

This article deconstructs the politics around creating the so-called popular story about the "polio vaccine success"-- which is still widely heralded as a success. However, any simple cursory analysis of its history and the effects of the vaccine show that it was a dismal failure and that any success was based on medical fraud of reclassification of expanded cases of polio (filed away under other diseases) to make it appear that polio "went away." The World Health Organization does this to the present, despite skyrocketing 'polio' everywhere. Widely known by the researchers even at the time, this is the story of the cover-up of the century: within this cover up, can be traced the expansion of using knowingly contaminated vaccines for depopulation everywhere. [there's even a book about this now, _The Virus and the Vaccine : The True Story of a Cancer-Causing Monkey Virus, Contaminated Polio Vaccine, and the Millions of Americans Exposed_, by Debbie Bookchin]

In short:

POLIO DISAPPEARANCE IDEA IS ONLY STATICIAL MEDICAL RECLASSIFICATION FRAUD TO HIDE POLLUTION VECTORS AND PESTICIDE VECTORS THAT CAUSED IT. POLIO SYMPTOMS CAN BE MYCOPLASMA AS WELL.

AND

POLIO DISAPPEARANCE IDEA IS ONLY A COVER FOR SPREADING KNOWINGLY CONTAMINATED VACCINES WORLDWIDE--FROM ONLY US/UK LABS THAT KNOWINGLY USED MONKEY VIRUS CONTAMINATED SUPPLIES, AND THROUGH THE UNITED NATIONS W.H.O (WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION): W.H.O. 'VACCINES' TESTED IN INDIA IN 2003 WERE FOUND TO BE CLOAKED/LACED WITH INFERTILITY AND STERILITY AGENTS.

---http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/02/311094.shtml[This is an article that appeared in the UK Magazine The Ecologist in 2004]

Polio Special Parts 1-4:A shot in the dark,from the UK Magazine The Ecologist (2004)

Polio is a devastating disease; the preferred method for fighting it is vaccination. Yet there is a mass of historic evidence that suggests it is not caused by a virus but by industrial and agricultural pollution.

Why Fluoride in U.S. Water? U.S. Military's Long Term Human Experiment on You, Despite Fluoride's Known Toxicity: sold as good for you

[These images brought to you by a successful propoganda campaign and mass human experimentation without your knowledge, by the American Dental Association, courtesy of the Atomic Energy Commission: The Real Effects of Floride on Teeth]

Fluoridation seems to be an ongoing experiment on the whole population of the U.S., "courtesy" of secret Atomic Energy Commission desires:

Their military affiliations were kept secret: Hodge was described as a pharmacologist, Barnett as a pediatrician. Placed in charge of the Newburgh project [for generating both disinformation and secret flouride toxicity levels in mass human experimentation] was David B. Ast, chief dental officer of the State Health Department. Ast had participated in a key secret wartime conference on fluoride held by the Manhattan Project, and later worked with Dr. Hodge on the Project's investigation of human injury in the New Jersey incident, according to once-secret memos. The committee recommended that Newburgh be fluoridated [to continue the human experiment]. It also selected the types of medical studies to be done, and "provided expert guidance" for the duration of the experiment. The key question to be answered was: "Are there any cumulative effects -- beneficial or otherwise, on tissues and organs other than the teeth -- of long-continued ingestion of such small concentrations...?" According to the declassified documents, this was also key information sought by the bomb program, which would require long-continued [experimental] exposure of workers and communities to fluoride throughout the Cold War.

"I'm shocked -- beyond words," said present-day Newburgh Mayor Audrey Carey, commenting on these reporters' findings. "It reminds me of the Tuskegee experiment that was done on syphilis patients down in Alabama."

Fluoride, Teeth And The Atomic Bomb Project Censored12-11-2005

The original secret version--obtained by these reporters--of a 1948 study published by Program F scientists in the Journal of the American Dental Association shows that evidence of adverse health effects from fluoride was censored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) --considered the most powerful of Cold War agencies-- for reasons of national security.

Intorduction - The following article was commissioned by the Christian Science Monitor in the spring of 1997. Despite much favorable comment from editors, and full documentation, the story remains unpublished by the Monitor. By any yardstick, this report was an award-winning scoop for any national paper. The report offers a glimpse into the history of fluoride, a bio-accumulative toxic that Americans ingest every day [unless they already know better, as noted in previous blog post, fluoride in water combines with other things and creates known carcinogens as well: here]. The authors, Griffiths and Bryson, spent more than a year on research. With the belief that the information should be withheld no longer, the authors gave their report to Waste Not, and others, with a short note: "use as you wish."

This introduction is taken from Waste Not #414 (September 1997) where the article was first published. The article went on to be nominated as the year's 18th most censored story in the 1998 Project Censored Series.

Fluoride, Teeth, and the Atomic Bombby Chris Bryson & Joel Griffiths

Some fifty years after the United States began adding fluoride to public water supplies to reduce cavities in children's teeth, declassified government documents are shedding new light on the roots of that still-controversial public health measure, revealing a surprising connection between fluoride and the dawning of the nuclear age.

Today, two thirds of U.S. public drinking water is fluoridated. Many municipalities still resist the practice, disbelieving the government's assurances of safety.

Since the days of World War II, when this nation prevailed by building the world's first atomic bomb, U.S. public health leaders have maintained that low doses of fluoride are safe for people, and good for children's teeth.

That safety verdict should now be re-examined in the light of hundreds of once-secret WWII documents obtained by Griffiths and Bryson --including declassified papers of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. military group that built the atomic bomb.

Fluoride was the key chemical in atomic bomb production, according to the documents. Massive quantities of fluoride-- millions of tons-- were essential for the manufacture of bomb-grade uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War. One of the most toxic chemicals known, fluoride rapidly emerged as the leading chemical health hazard of the U.S atomic bomb program--both for workers and for nearby communities, the documents reveal.

Other revelations include:

* Much of the original proof that fluoride is safe for humans in low doses was generated by A-bomb program scientists, who had been secretly ordered to provide "evidence useful in litigation" against defense contractors for fluoride injury to citizens. The first lawsuits against the U.S. A-bomb program were not over radiation, but over fluoride damage, the documents show.

* Human studies were required. Bomb program researchers played a leading role in the design and implementation of the most extensive U.S. study of the health effects of fluoridating public drinking water--conducted in Newburgh, New York from 1945 to 1956. Then, in a classified operation code-named "Program F," they secretly gathered and analyzed blood and tissue samples from Newburgh citizens, with the cooperation of State Health Department personnel.

* The original secret version--obtained by these reporters--of a 1948 study published by Program F scientists in the Journal of the American Dental Association shows that evidence of adverse health effects from fluoride was censored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) --considered the most powerful of Cold War agencies-- for reasons of national security.

* The bomb program's fluoride safety studies were conducted at the University of Rochester, site of one of the most notorious human radiation experiments of the Cold War, in which unsuspecting hospital patients were injected with toxic doses of radioactive plutonium. The fluoride studies were conducted with the same ethical mind-set, in which "national security" was paramount.

* The U.S. government's conflict of interest--and its motive to prove fluoride "safe" -- has not until now been made clear to the general public in the furious debate over water fluoridation since the 1950's, nor to civilian researchers and health professionals, or journalists.

The declassified documents resonate with a growing body of scientific evidence, and a chorus of questions, about the health effects of fluoride in the environment.

Human exposure to fluoride has mushroomed since World War II, due not only to fluoridated water and toothpaste, but to environmental pollution by major industries from aluminum to pesticides: fluoride is a critical industrial chemical.

The impact can be seen, literally, in the smiles of our children. Large numbers of U.S. young people--up to 80 percent in some cities--now have dental fluorosis, the first visible sign of excessive fluoride exposure, according to the U.S. National Research Council. (The signs are whitish flecks or spots, particularly on the front teeth, or dark spots or stripes in more severe cases.)

Less-known to the public is that fluoride also accumulates in bones --"The teeth are windows to what's happening in the bones," explains Paul Connett, Professor of Chemistry at St. Lawrence University (N.Y.). In recent years, pediatric bone specialists have expressed alarm about an increase in stress fractures among U.S. young people. Connett and other scientists are concerned that fluoride --linked to bone damage by studies since the 1930's-- may be a contributing factor. The declassified documents add urgency: much of the original proof that low-dose fluoride is safe for children's bones came from U.S. bomb program scientists, according to this investigation.

Now, researchers who have reviewed these declassified documents fear that Cold War national security considerations may have prevented objective scientific evaluation of vital public health questions concerning fluoride.

"Information was buried," concludes Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, former head of toxicology at Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, and now a critic of fluoridation. Animal studies Mullenix and co-workers conducted at Forsyth in the early 1990's indicated that fluoride was a powerful central nervous system (CNS) toxin, and might adversely affect human brain functioning, even at low doses. (New epidemiological evidence from China adds support, showing a correlation between low-dose fluoride exposure and diminished I.Q. in children.) Mullenix's results were published in 1995, in a reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal. [The Nazis and the Soviets were known to put high levels of flouride in prison camp water because they knew then that it made the prisoners less mentally capable, more tractile, and docile.]

During her investigation, Mullenix was astonished to discover there had been virtually no previous U.S. studies of fluoride's effects on the human brain. Then, her application for a grant to continue her CNS research was turned down by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), where an NIH panel, she says, flatly told her that "fluoride does not have central nervous system effects."

Declassified documents of the U.S. atomic-bomb program indicate otherwise.

An April 29, 1944 Manhattan Project memo reports: "Clinical evidence suggests that uranium hexafluoride [UF^6] may have a rather marked central nervous system effect.... It seems most likely that the F [code for fluoride] component rather than the T [code for uranium] is the causative factor."

The memo --stamped "secret"-- is addressed to the head of the Manhattan Project's Medical Section, Colonel Stafford Warren. Colonel Warren is asked to approve a program of animal research on CNS effects: "Since work with these compounds is essential, it will be necessary to know in advance what mental effects may occur after exposure...This is important not only to protect a given individual, but also to prevent a confused workman from injuring others by improperly performing his duties."

On the same day, Colonel Warren approved the CNS research program. This was in 1944, at the height of the Second World War and the nation's race to build the world's first atomic bomb. For research on fluoride's CNS effects to be approved at such a momentous time, the supporting evidence set forth in the proposal forwarded along with the memo must have been persuasive.

The proposal, however, is missing from the files of the U.S. National Archives. "If you find the memos, but the document they refer to is missing, its probably still classified," said Charles Reeves, chief librarian at the Atlanta branch of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, where the memos were found. Similarly, no results of the Manhattan Project's fluoride CNS research could be found in the files.

After reviewing the memos, Mullenix declared herself "flabbergasted." She went on, "How could I be told by NIH that fluoride has no central nervous system effects when these documents were sitting there all the time?" She reasons that the Manhattan Project did do fluoride CNS studies --"that kind of warning, that fluoride workers might be a danger to the bomb program by improperly performing their duties--I can't imagine that would be ignored"-- but that the results were buried because they might create a difficult legal and public relations problem for the government.

The author of the 1944 CNS research proposal was Dr. Harold C. Hodge, at the time chief of fluoride toxicology studies for the University of Rochester division of the Manhattan Project. Nearly fifty years later at the Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, Dr. Mullenix was introduced to a gently ambling elderly man brought in to serve as a consultant [and obviously intentionally misleading force and to keep her under surveillance without her knowledge for reporting back to the "floride police state"] on her CNS research--Harold C. Hodge. By then Hodge had achieved status emeritus as a world authority on fluoride safety. "But even though he was supposed to be helping me," says Mullenix, "he never once mentioned the CNS work he had done for the Manhattan Project."

The "black hole" in fluoride CNS research since the days of the Manhattan Project is unacceptable to Mullenix, who refuses to abandon the issue. "There is so much fluoride exposure now, and we simply do not know what it is doing," she says. "You can't just walk away from this."

Dr. Antonio Noronha, an NIH scientific review advisor familiar with Dr. Mullenix's grant request, says her proposal was rejected by a scientific peer-review group. He terms her claim of institutional bias against fluoride CNS research "farfetched." He adds, "We strive very hard at NIH to make sure politics does not enter the picture."

Fluoride and National Security

The documentary trail begins at the height of WW2, in 1944, when a severe pollution incident occurred downwind of the E.I. du Pont du Nemours Company chemical factory in Deepwater, New Jersey. The factory was then producing millions of pounds of fluoride for the Manhattan project, the ultra-secret U.S. military program racing to produce the world's first atomic bomb.

The farms downwind in Gloucester and Salem counties were famous for their high-quality produce -- their peaches went directly to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Their tomatoes were bought up by Campbell's Soup.

But in the summer of 1943, the farmers began to report that their crops were blighted, and that "something is burning up the peach crops around here."

Poultry died after an all-night thunderstorm, they reported. Farm workers who ate the produce they had picked sometimes vomited all night and into the next day. "I remember our horses looked sick and were too stiff to work," these reporters were told by Mildred Giordano, who was a teenager at the time. Some cows were so crippled they could not stand up, and grazed by crawling on their bellies.

The account was confirmed in taped interviews, shortly before he died, with Philip Sadtler of Sadtler Laboratories of Philadelphia, one of the nation's oldest chemical consulting firms. Sadtler had personally conducted the initial investigation of the damage.

Although the farmers did not know it, the attention of the Manhattan Project and the federal government was riveted on the New Jersey incident, according to once-secret documents obtained by these reporters. After the war's end, in a secret Manhattan Project memo dated March 1, 1946, the Project's chief of fluoride toxicology studies, Harold C. Hodge, worriedly wrote to his boss Colonel Stafford L. Warren, Chief of the Medical Division, about "problems associated with the question of fluoride contamination of the atmosphere in a certain section of New Jersey. There seem to be four distinct (though related) problems," continued Hodge;

1. A question of injury of the peach crop in 1944.

2. A report of extraordinary fluoride content of vegetables grown in this area.

3. A report of abnormally high fluoride content in the blood of human individuals residing in this area.

4. A report raising the question of serious poisoning of horses and cattle in this area.

The New Jersey farmers waited until the war was over, then sued du Pont and the Manhattan Project for fluoride damage -- reportedly the first lawsuits against the U.S. A-bomb program.

Although seemingly trivial, the lawsuits shook the government, the secret documents reveal. Under the personal direction of Manhattan Project chief Major General Leslie R.Groves, secret meetings were convened in Washington, with compulsory attendance by scores of scientists and officials from the U.S War Department, the Manhattan Project, the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture and Justice Departments, the U.S Army's Chemical Warfare Service and Edgewood Arsenal, the Bureau of Standards, and du Pont lawyers. Declassified memos of the meetings reveal a secret mobilization of the full forces of the government to defeat the New Jersey farmers:

These agencies "are making scientific investigations to obtain evidence which may be used to protect the interest of the Government at the trial of the suits brought by owners of peach orchards in ... New Jersey," stated Manhattan Project Lieutenant Colonel Cooper B. Rhodes, in a memo c.c.'d to General Groves.

"At the request of the Secretary of War the Department of Agriculture has agreed to cooperate in investigating complaints of crop damage attributed... to fumes from a plant operated in connection with the Manhattan Project."

Signed, L.R. Groves, Major General U.S.

"The Department of Justice is cooperating in the defense of these suits," wrote General Groves in a Feb. 28, 1946 memo to the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy.

Why the national-security emergency over a few lawsuits by New Jersey farmers?

In 1946 the United States had begun full-scale production of atomic bombs. No other nation had yet tested a nuclear weapon [even though high level members of the Roosevelt administration were passing on atomic documents as well as atomic bomb making materials to the USSR--that's how the USSR developed the atomic bomb, it was leaked by U.S. spies to them, notably Henry Hopkins--the right-hand man to FDR--later revealed by post USSR documents from the Kremlin as indeed a Soviet Spy in the White House of FDR]; see here], and the A-bomb was seen as crucial for U.S leadership of the postwar world. The New Jersey fluoride lawsuits were a serious roadblock to that strategy.

"The specter of endless lawsuits haunted the military," writes Lansing Lamont in his acclaimed book about the first atomic bomb test, "Day of Trinity."

In the case of fluoride, "If the farmers won, it would open the door to further suits, which might impede the bomb program's ability to use fluoride," said Jacqueline Kittrell, a Tennessee public interest lawyer specializing in nuclear cases, who examined the declassified fluoride documents. (Kittrell has represented plaintiffs in several human radiation experiment cases.) She added, "The reports of human injury were especially threatening, because of the potential for enormous settlements -- not to mention the PR problem."

Indeed, du Pont was particularly concerned about the "possible psychologic reaction" to the New Jersey pollution incident, according to a secret 1946 Manhattan Project memo. [Supply versus demand issues once more...]

Facing a threat from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to embargo the region's produce because of "high fluoride content," du Pont dispatched its lawyers to the FDA offices in Washington, where an agitated meeting ensued. According to a memo sent next day to General Groves, Du Pont's lawyer argued "that in view of the pending suits...any action by the Food and Drug Administration... would have a serious effect on the du Pont Company and would create a bad public relations situation."

After the meeting adjourned, Manhattan Project Captain John Davies approached the FDA's Food Division chief and "impressed upon Dr. White the substantial interest which the Government had in claims which might arise as a result of action which might be taken by the Food and Drug Administration."

There was no embargo.

Instead, new tests for fluoride in the New Jersey area would be conducted -- not by the Department of Agriculture -- but by the U.S. Army's Chemical Warfare Service because "work done by the Chemical Warfare Service would carry the greatest weight as evidence if... lawsuits are started by the complainants." The memo was signed by General Groves. [Even though of course this is clearly a huge conflict of interest to let the defendant--the U.S. military--in such suits generate "neutral scientific" data that bears directly on their own innocence or guilt.]

Meanwhile, the public relations problem remained unresolved -- local citizens were in a panic about fluoride. [As they should be. It's a proper reaction to being systematically poisoned.]

The farmer's spokesman, Willard B. Kille, was personally invited to dine with General Groves --then known as "the man who built the atomic bomb" -- at his office at the War Department on March 26, 1946. Although he had been diagnosed with fluoride poisoning by his doctor, Kille departed the luncheon convinced of the government's good faith. The next day he wrote to the general, wishing the other farmers could have been present, he said, so "they too could come away with the feeling that their interests in this particular matter were being safeguarded by men of the very highest type whose integrity they could not question."

In a subsequent secret Manhattan project memo, a broader solution to the public relations problem was suggested by chief fluoride toxicologist Harold C. Hodge [the spy mentioned above sent to watch and perhaps foil any future toxicology studies about fluoride on the brain and nervous system that might reveal the truth]. He wrote to the [fellow co-conspirator] Medical Section chief, Col. Warren: "Would there be any use in making attempts to counteract the local fear of fluoride on the part of residents of Salem and Gloucester counties through lectures on F toxicology and perhaps the usefulness of F in tooth health?" Such lectures were indeed given, not only to New Jersey citizens but to the rest of the nation throughout the Cold War.

The New Jersey farmers' lawsuits were ultimately stymied by the government's refusal to reveal the key piece of information that would have settled the case --how much fluoride du Pont had vented into the atmosphere during the war. "Disclosure... would be injurious to the military security of the United States," wrote Manhattan Project Major C.A Taney, Jr. [or DuPont's private wealth, which means the same thing when ti comes down to it.] The farmers were pacified with token [hushmoney] financial settlements, according to interviews with descendants still living in the area.

"All we knew is that du Pont released some chemical that burned up all the peach trees around here," recalls Angelo Giordano, whose father James was one of the original plaintiffs. "The trees were no good after that, so we had to give up on the peaches." Their horses and cows, too, acted stiff and walked stiff, recalls his sister Mildred. "Could any of that have been the fluoride ?" she asked. (The symptoms she detailed to the authors are cardinal signs of fluoride toxicity, according to veterinary toxicologists.)

The Giordano family, too, has been plagued by bone and joint problems, Mildred adds. Recalling the settlement received by the Giordanos, Angelo told these reporters that "my father said he got about $200."

The farmers were stonewalled in their search for information, and their complaints have long since been forgotten. But they unknowingly left their imprint on history -- their claims of injury to their health reverberated through the corridors of power in Washington, and triggered intensive secret bomb-program research on the health effects of fluoride. A secret 1945 memo from Manhattan Project Lt. Col. Rhodes to General Groves stated: "Because of complaints that animals and humans have been injured by hydrogen fluoride fumes in [the New Jersey] area, although there are no pending suits involving such claims, the University of Rochester is conducting experiments to determine the toxic effect of fluoride."

Much of the proof of fluoride's safety in low doses rests on the postwar work performed by the University of Rochester, in anticipation of lawsuits against the bomb program for human injury.

Fluoride and the Cold War.

Delegating fluoride safety studies to the University of Rochester was not surprising. During WWII the federal government had become involved, for the first time, in large-scale funding of scientific research at government-owned labs and private colleges [thus starting the erosion of public interest science, toward mere military and corporate administration based science which is a huge destructive dead-end]. Those early spending priorities were shaped by the nation's often-secret military needs.

The prestigious upstate New York college, in particular, had housed a key wartime division of the Manhattan Project, studying the health effects of the new "special materials," such as uranium, plutonium, beryllium and fluoride, being used to make the atomic bomb. That work continued after the war, with millions of dollars flowing from the Manhattan Project and its successor organization, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). (Indeed, the bomb left an indelible imprint on all U.S. science in the late 1940's and 50's. Up to 90% of federal funds for university research came from either the Defense Department or the AEC in this period, according to Noam Chomsky's 1996 book "The Cold War and the University.")

The University of Rochester medical school became a revolving door for senior bomb program scientists. Postwar faculty included Stafford Warren, the top medical officer of the Manhattan Project, and Harold Hodge, chief of fluoride research for the bomb program.

But this marriage of military secrecy and medical science bore deformed offspring.

The University of Rochester's classified fluoride studies -- code- named Program F -- were conducted at its Atomic Energy Project (AEP), a top-secret facility funded by the AEC and housed in Strong Memorial Hospital. It was there that one of the most notorious human radiation experiments of the Cold War took place, in which unsuspecting hospital patients were injected with toxic doses of radioactive plutonium. Revelation of this experiment in a Pulitzer prize-winning account by Eileen Welsome led to a 1995 U.S. Presidential investigation, and a multimillion-dollar cash settlement for victims.

Program F was not about children's teeth. It grew directly out of litigation against the bomb program and its main purpose was to furnish scientific ammunition which the government and its nuclear contractors could use to defeat [and distract with disinformation the many] lawsuits for human injury. Program F's director was none other than Harold C. Hodge, who had led the Manhattan Project investigation of alleged human injury in the New Jersey fluoride-pollution incident.

Program F's purpose is spelled out in a classified 1948 report. It reads: "To supply evidence useful in the litigation arising from an alleged loss of a fruit crop several years ago, a number of problems have been opened. Since excessive blood fluoride levels were reported in human residents of the same area, our principal effort has been devoted to describing the relationship of blood fluorides to toxic effects."

The litigation referred to, of course, and the claims of human injury were against the bomb program and its contractors. Thus, the purpose of Program F was to obtain evidence useful in litigation against the bomb program. The research was being conducted by the defendants.

The potential conflict of interest is clear. If lower dose ranges were found hazardous by Program F, it might have opened the bomb program and its contractors to lawsuits for injury to human health, as well as public outcry.

Comments lawyer Kittrell: "This and other documents indicate that the University of Rochester's fluoride research grew out of the New Jersey lawsuits and was performed in anticipation of lawsuits against the bomb program for human injury. Studies undertaken for litigation purposes by the defendants would not be considered scientifically acceptable today, " adds Kittrell, "because of their inherent bias to prove the chemical safe."

Unfortunately, much of the proof of fluoride's safety rests on the work performed by Program F Scientists at the University of Rochester. During the postwar period that university emerged as the leading academic center for establishing the safety of fluoride, as well as its effectiveness in reducing tooth decay, according to Dental School spokesperson William H. Bowen, MD. The key figure in this research, Bowen said, was Harold C. Hodge-- who also became a leading national proponent of fluoridating public drinking water [i.e., dumping his known fluoride toxin into everyone]. Program F's interest in water fluoridation was not just 'to counteract the local fear of fluoride on the part of residents,' as Hodge had earlier written. The bomb program needed human studies, as they had needed human studies for plutonium, and adding fluoride to public water supplies provided one opportunity. [So who said the Nazis have one up on the U.S. military? The Nazis experimented on camps of people. The U.S. military experimented on the whole U.S. population.]

The A-Bomb Program and Water Fluoridation

Bomb-program scientists played a prominent -- if unpublicized -- role in the nation's first-planned water fluoridation experiment, in Newburgh, New York. The Newburgh Demonstration Project is considered the most extensive study of the health effects of fluoridation, supplying much of the evidence that low doses are safe for children's bones, and good for their teeth.

Planning began in 1943 with the appointment of a special New York State Health Department committee to study the advisability of adding fluoride to Newburgh's drinking water. The chairman of the committee was Dr. Hodge, then chief of fluoride toxicity studies for the Manhattan Project.

Subsequent members included Henry L. Barnett, a captain in the Project's Medical section, and John W. Fertig, in 1944 with the office of Scientific Research and Development, the Pentagon group which sired the Manhattan Project. Their military affiliations were kept secret: Hodge was described as a pharmacologist, Barnett as a pediatrician. Placed in charge of the Newburgh project [for generating disinformation] was David B. Ast, chief dental officer of the State Health Department. Ast had participated in a key secret wartime conference on fluoride held by the Manhattan Project, and later worked with Dr. Hodge on the Project's investigation of human injury in the New Jersey incident, according to once-secret memos.

The committee recommended that Newburgh be fluoridated. It also selected the types of medical studies to be done, and "provided expert guidance" for the duration of the experiment. The key question to be answered was: "Are there any cumulative effects -- beneficial or otherwise, on tissues and organs other than the teeth -- of long-continued ingestion of such small concentrations...?" According to the declassified documents, this was also key information sought by the bomb program, which would require long-continued exposure of workers and communities to fluoride throughout the Cold War.

In May 1945, Newburgh's water was fluoridated, and over the next ten years its residents were studied by the State Health Department. In tandem, Program F conducted its own secret studies, focusing on the amounts of fluoride Newburgh citizens retained in their blood and tissues - key information sought by the bomb program: "Possible toxic effects of fluoride were in the forefront of consideration," the advisory committee stated. Health Department personnel cooperated, shipping blood and placenta samples to the Program F team at the University of Rochester. The samples were collected by Dr. David B. Overton, the Department's chief of pediatric studies at Newburgh.

The final report of the Newburgh Demonstration Project, published in 1956 in the Journal of the American Dental Association, concluded that "small concentrations" of fluoride were safe for U.S.citizens. The biological proof -- "based on work performed ... at the University of Rochester Atomic Energy Project" -- was delivered by Dr. Hodge.

Today, news that scientists from the atomic bomb program secretly shaped and guided the Newburgh fluoridation experiment, and studied the citizen's blood and tissue samples, is greeted with incredulity.

"I'm shocked -- beyond words," said present-day Newburgh Mayor Audrey Carey, commenting on these reporters' findings. "It reminds me of the Tuskegee experiment that was done on syphilis patients down in Alabama."

As a child in the early 1950's, Mayor Carey was taken to the old firehouse on Broadway in Newburgh, which housed the Public Health Clinic. There, doctors from the Newburgh fluoridation project studied her teeth, and a peculiar fusion of two finger bones on her left hand she had been born with. Today, adds Carey, her granddaughter has white dental-fluorosis marks on her front teeth.

Mayor Carey wants answers from the government about the secret history of fluoride, and the Newburgh fluoridation experiment. "I absolutely want to pursue it," she said. "It is appalling to do any kind of experimentation and study without people's knowledge and permission."

Contacted by these reporters, the director of the Newburgh experiment, David B. Ast, says he was unaware Manhattan Project scientists were involved. "If I had known, I would have been certainly investigating why, and what the connection was," he said. Did he know that blood and placenta samples from Newburgh were being sent to bomb program researchers at the University of Rochester? "I was not aware of it," Ast replied. Did he recall participating in the Manhattan Project's secret wartime conference on fluoride in January 1944, or going to New Jersey with Dr. Hodge to investigate human injury in the du Pont case--as secret memos state? He told the reporters he had no recollection of these events.

A spokesperson for the University of Rochester Medical Center, Bob Loeb, confirmed that blood and tissue samples from Newburgh had been tested by the University's Dr. Hodge. On the ethics of secretly studying U.S citizens to obtain information useful in litigation against the A-bomb program, he said, "that's a question we cannot answer." He referred inquiries to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), successor to the Atomic Energy Commission.

"We're just the military, a branch of the DuPont Corporation, Your Honor"

A spokesperson for the DOE in Washington, Jayne Brady, confirmed that a review of DOE files indicated that a "significant reason" for fluoride experiments conducted at the University of Rochester after the war was "impending litigation between the du Pont company and residents of New Jersey areas." However, she added, "DOE has found no documents to indicate that fluoride research was done to protect the Manhattan Project or its contractors from lawsuits."

On Manhattan Project involvement in Newburgh, the spokesperson stated, "Nothing that we have [this is a lie] suggests that the DOE or predecessor agencies -- especially the Manhattan Project -- authorized fluoride experiments to be performed on children in the 1940's."

When told that the reporters had several documents that directly tied the Manhattan Project's successor agency at the University of Rochester, the AEP, to the Newburgh experiment, the DOE spokesperson later conceded her study was confined to "the available universe" of documents.

Two days later spokesperson Jayne Brady faxed a statement for clarification: "My search only involved the documents that we collected as part of our human radiation experiments project -- fluoride was not part of our research effort.

"Most significantly," the statement continued, relevant documents may be in a classified collection at the DOE Oak Ridge National Laboratory known as the Records Holding Task Group. "This collection consists entirely of classified documents removed from other files for the purpose of classified document accountability many years ago," and was "a rich source of documents for the human radiation experiments project," she said.

The crucial question arising from this investigation is: Were adverse health findings from Newburgh and other bomb-program fluoride studies suppressed? All AEC-funded studies had to be declassified before publication in civilian medical and dental journals. Where are the original classified versions?

The transcript of one of the major secret scientific conferences of WW2--on "fluoride metabolism"--is missing from the files of the U.S. National Archives. Participants in the conference included key figures who promoted the [lie of] safety of fluoride and water fluoridation to the public after the war - Harold Hodge of the Manhattan Project, David B. Ast of the Newburgh Project, and U.S. Public Health Service dentist H.Trendley Dean, popularly known as the "father of fluoridation." "If it is missing from the files, it is probably still classified," National Archives librarians told these reporters.

A 1944 WW2 Manhattan Project classified report on water fluoridation is missing from the files of the University of Rochester Atomic Energy Project, the U.S. National Archives, and the Nuclear Repository at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The next four numerically consecutive documents are also missing, while the remainder of the "MP-1500 series" is present. "Either those documents are still classified, or they've been 'disappeared' by the government," says Clifford Honicker, Executive Director of the American Environmental Health Studies Project, in Knoxville, Tennessee, which provided key evidence in the public exposure and prosecution of U.S. human radiation experiments.

Similarly, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by these authors over a year ago with the DOE for hundreds of classified fluoride reports have failed to dislodge any. "We're behind [it]," explained Amy Rothrock, FOIA officer for the Department of Energy at their Oak Ridge operations.

Was information suppressed? These reporters made what appears to be the first discovery of the original classified version of a fluoride safety study by bomb program scientists. A censored version of this study was later published in the August 1948 Journal of the American Dental Association. Comparison of the secret with the published version indicates that the U.S. AEC did censor damaging information on fluoride, to the point of tragicomedy.

This was a study of the dental and physical health of workers in a factory producing fluoride for the A-bomb program, conducted by a team of dentists from the Manhattan Project.

* The secret version reports that most of the men had no teeth left. The published version reports only that the men had fewer cavities.

* The secret version says the men had to wear rubber boots because the fluoride fumes disintegrated the nails in their shoes. The published version does not mention this.

* The secret version says the fluoride may have acted similarly on the men's teeth, contributing to their toothlessness. The published version omits this statement.

The published version concludes that "the men were unusually healthy, judged from both a medical and dental point of view."

Asked for comment on the early links of the Manhattan Project to water fluoridation, Dr Harold Slavkin, Director of the National Institute for Dental Research, the U.S. agency which today funds fluoride research, said, "I wasn't aware of any input from the Atomic Energy Commission." Nevertheless, he insisted, fluoride's efficacy and safety in the prevention of dental cavities over the last fifty years is well-proved. [another lie] "The motivation of a scientist is often different from the outcome," he reflected. "I do not hold a prejudice about where the [disinformation/]knowledge comes from." [As they say "figures don't lie, though liars sure can figure."]

After comparing the secret and published versions of the censored study, toxicologist Phyllis Mullenix commented, "This makes me ashamed to be a scientist." Of other Cold War-era fluoride safety studies, she asks, "Were they all done like this?"

Archival research by Clifford Honicker

About the authors :

Joel Griffiths is a medical writer in New York City, author of a book on radiation hazards and numerous articles for medical and popular publications. Joel can be contacted at 212-662-6695. Chris Bryson holds a Masters degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and has worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation, The Manchester Guardian, The Christian Science Monitor and Public Television. Chris can be contacted at 212-665-3442.

Excerpts from The Secret War and The Fluoride ConspiracyBy Dr. Geoffrey E. Smith

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has always measured the safety of fluoridation on the basis of one study of crippling skeletal fluorosis, which was first published in 1935.

EPA's regulation for the maximum allowable concentration of fluoride in drinking water was established for one purpose - to prevent this disease. However crippling is the [BIOACCUMULATIVE] end stage of chronic fluoride poisoning. The earlier stages involve gastrointestinal problems, arthritis, and osteoporosis. None of these earlier symptoms are considered in the regulation ... only the end stage.

In 1985, when EPA [suddenly pretended there was a grand change in human biology and] raised the maximum contaminant level to 4 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water, they used dosage figures miscalculated in 1953 by Harold C. Hodge, who was chairman of the NAS committee on toxicology. Hodge's original figures (20-80 mg/day for 10-20 years) were corrected by Hodge in 1979, and by NAS in 1993. The corrected figures, based on Roholm's classic study of workers in the cryolite industry, amount to 0.2 to 0.35 milligrams of fluoride per kilogram of body weight per day, for eleven years. When extrapolated over a lifetime of 55 to 96 years, these crippling dosage figures equal 1 milligram of fluoride daily for each 55 pounds of body weight ... 0.04 mg/kg/day.

In the early years of water fluoridation [human experimentation], this dosage was not the norm. At that time, water was virtually the only source of fluoride in the [experimental] American diet. The total intake for most adults was 0.02 mg/kg/day ... about one to one and a half milligrams of fluoride daily.

Today, the figure is 0.095 mg/kg/day... from food and drinking water alone ... more than 6 milligrams daily.

[Back to the soil issue mentioned in the Supply Versus Demand article.] This increase in ingested fluoride, largely due to the use of artificial fertilizers containing fluoride, pesticide residues, dental products, and modern food processing, has changed a relatively safe dosage into one capable of causing crippling deformities of the spine and major joints, as well as the muscle pain associated with fibromyalgia.

Beer and wine often contain significant quantities of fluoride, as does ordinary tea. Grape juice often contains even larger quantities of fluoride, due to the widespread use of pesticides, which remain on the grape skin. Fluoride in toothpaste can be absorbed through the tissues of the mouth, as well as swallowed accidentally. Many prescription drugs also contain fluoride. None of these items are labeled to indicate the quantity of fluoride added to the daily dietary total. [cont'd]

About Me

A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.